I had called her. As I've mentioned in previous columns, she'll call me only if it's a matter of life and death. Apparently, I was wrong.

"I know Roy Hodgson is the manager, but I don't think England will bore me to death," I reassured her.

My cheap humour failed to appease her. It didn't make her laugh either. She was busily succumbing to Surreal Geography Syndrome.

She has suffered from the illness for years. As soon as I mentioned that I would be proudly representing this newspaper at the World Cup finals in Brazil, I sensed the symptoms taking hold.

"Ooh, you don't want to go to Brazil," she mumbled. "Things are not right in Brazil."

She is the master of both misinformation and understatement; a lethal combination.

If I had made plans to holiday in Baghdad at the height of the Iraq War, she'd have muttered: "Ooh, you don't want to go to Baghdad. Things are not right in Baghdad."

That's the understatement - she can make a war sound like a mild toothache.

But when the understatement is combined with the misinformation, surreal geography takes over.

For instance, she recently inquired about my well-being after she'd heard news of the military coup in Thailand.

Distance is relative from afar. She had somehow confused Bangkok with Bishan.

Her grasp of geography was at its most surreal when she got in touch immediately after the 2011 Japanese earthquake to check if I was okay.

In fairness, I was travelling extensively at the time, promoting a new book. But I wasn't in Tohoku or even Tokyo. I was in Toa Payoh.

Of course, I now regularly mock my mother's hazy geography at every opportunity. If a volcano erupts in Italy, I check that she's okay in England.

But if she struggles to understand the distance between Japan and Singapore, then Brazil's vast expanse is truly beyond her.

"I'm watching it now on the TV," she cried last week. "They are in the streets protesting. The subway workers are on strike. They're lighting fires. The police are using tear gas. Ooh, you don't want to go to Brazil. Things are not right in Brazil."